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Thursday, June 21, 2012

Art experts refuse to stand up to forgeries and mislabeled art for fear of being sued

By Marc Jampole

An
article in today’s New York Times
details a very disturbing trend: curators, scholars and other art expertsare refusing to have an opinion on whether a work of art is genuine or not. By
genuine, what the article and all the art experts quoted mean to say is that
the art was created by the person to whom it is attributed, always a famous
artist.

The
reason that the art experts are afraid to do what their job is—analyze art and
determine its authenticity—is that they are afraid of being sued by either a
purchaser or a seller who learns that her Rodin is not really a Rodin. With paintings going for tens and sometimes
hundreds of millions, a lot is at stake when someone says that a painting that
was thought to be a Leonardo or a Matisse was really painted by someone else—a
follower, a member of the school or even an out-and-out forgery.

When
lots of money is on the line, people often sue when they don’t get their way,
so it makes sense that they would sue someone who can cost them money because
of a studied opinion.

For
example, the Times article includes a
photo of some of 74 plasters attributed to Edgar Degas. Too quote the caption: “fearing lawsuits, scholars are afraid to
declare them genuine or not.”

It may make sense to those
who initiate these lawsuits, but that doesn’t change the highly suspect ethical
position of the art expert who bites his tongue about his professional opinion.
The lack of integrity of the art expert who lets pass a forgery or a mislabeled
painting is, as the Romans used to say, “res
ipso loquitur or “a thing that proves
itself.” It’s similar to a stock analyst who won’t pan a stock because
his company is selling it or the public relations executive who lets a company
lie in a news release because it’s a large client. It’s just plain wrong. And
it’s a betrayal of the trust that society puts in experts and other
intellectuals. (The first to use the term “betrayal of the intellectuals,” was
Julian Benda, who argued in 1927 that European intellectuals of the preceding
hundred years often ceased to follow their professional dictates to reason
dispassionately about political and military matters, instead becoming
apologists for nationalism, warmongering and racism.)

The
most intriguing part of the story, though, is not what it says about yet another
betrayal by intellectuals, but what it says about the power of branding.

Just
think about it: Here is a beautiful work of art that delights or stuns or
evokes some emotional and intellectual reaction that is both pleasurable and
edifying. Suddenly you learn that it’s
not a Picasso and so it’s worth less money.
Or an absolute monstrosity of a drawing, just as “fugly” as you could
imagine—but then you learn that John Chamberlain did it as a sketch for one of
his metal sculptures and suddenly it gains in value. The value of the art work
increases or decreases dramatically by attaching a name to or detaching a name
from the work, whose essence remains the same. It’s like bottling tap water, giving
it a name that evokes health or purity and selling it as special water,
wait…they’ve been doing that for years!

When
the name of the artist and his or her general style becomes a brand, the value
of which inflates the price that people and museums are willing to pay for the
work, people are really buying the name more than they are buying the work
itself. As with Coke, Bill Blass or even Paul Newman’s salad dressing, the
power of the brand is an integral part of the product. The brand on a product
usually stands for a set of values with which the company wants to associate
its products, or it enables the company to extend to other markets or other
product types easily, because people know the brand. In the case of the name of
an artist, the product doesn’t change, just the price people are willing to pay
for it.

The
power of branding in art is ultimately bad for society, for this reason: Rich
folk trade this art between themselves or buy it and donate it to museums
(often years later for a tax break on the current value which may be many times
what was originally paid for the piece). All of this money is thereby kept out
of the real economy. It doesn’t create jobs. It doesn’t help the economy grow. It’s
just another proof that cutting taxes on the wealthy (as Bush II did twice and
Romney wants to do again) doesn’t create more jobs than if the government had
used the money to improve our roads, reduce the number of kids in public school
classes or invest in advanced technologies.
We should end the tax deduction for giving art to museums or assess a
very steep tax on all art purchases of more than $250,000. My solution would be
to return to the taxation system of 1979, which will not only result in the
wealthy having far less money to spend on frivolities such as signatures at the
bottom of paintings, but also help to create a more equitable distribution of
wealth.

If it weren’t for the entertainment value, I’d be pleased that Texas Governor Rick Perry is foundering in the Republican presidential race. After all, Governor Perry, who is in an unprecedented fourth term as chief executive of the nation's second-largest state, still might get the Republican nomination for president. If that happens there’s no telling what the voters might be fooled into doing. Just look at how far George W. Bush got.